Is anyone else trying to figure out where the hell the month of September went? I am. My calendar says I've been busy, but I think I've been TOO busy! More writing, that's what I need to balance out my life. You laugh, but I'm serious. I love going to events & going on adventures, but I am still woefully behind on my revision of "Pawn." Still, as much as I love disappearing into the world of my story, reality does need to be tended to now & then.

That said, I did get over 2 pages written this afternoon, which makes me feel good. (When stuck on a part in "Pawn," just add Nivalis & everything just gets much easier & fun to write.) With the return of the rain, tomorrow should be an excellent day to stay home, nestle down in my chair with an afghan blanket & copious cups of tea, & write equally copious pages . . . at least if I get a decent night's sleep. So boa noite! I will put up some photos from last weekend's South Seattle meet-up with the Port Townsend haiku folks soon.

Well, Chapter One of "Nullum: Book One" has been mailed off to Willamette Writers, along with a lousy synopsis, for critique at the WW Conference in August. I really need to learn how to write better synopses. But it's done, so now I am recharging my creative juices by reading "City of Bones" by Cassandra Clare and "The Breaking of Northwall" by Paul O. Williams. I'm rereading the former because I've been itching to read the 3rd book in the Mortal Instruments trilogy, but I wanted to read the previous two books first, and I know once I start her books, I'll get sucked into them and not get any writing done. (It has happened before.) And I'm reading the first of the Pelbar series because Paul O. Williams was a talented haiku poet and wrote science fiction as well, and being an amateur haiku poet myself who is trying to write fantasy, I thought I should partake of his fiction.

Last Sunday, Russ and I went kayaking around Deception Pass with our kayaking class. I am happy to report that neither of us tipped over and fell out of our kayaks, though I had a close call while crossing a current and ended up bracing with my hands (should have used my paddle, but it worked). The kelp was quite lovely to watch, but not too closely, because bobbing kelp plus bobbing kayak equals bobbing sense of balance. Still, I had a lot more fun than I thought I would, and was less sore the next day than I'd anticipated being (except for a headache, which retreated after a couple Excedrin). Russ may be able to convince me to go kayaking with him again someday.

Let's see, haiku news. I got a senryu accepted for the January 2010 issue of Prune Juice, so that's exciting (though it seems sooooo far away!). I should hear back from The Heron's Nest about my recent submission in a few weeks. In the meantime, I need to send some more poems out...

Returned home from a beautiful but long drive up to the North Cascades yesterday to find that the new issue of The Heron's Nest is on-line. http://www.theheronsnest.com/ I've got a haiku on pg. 11, my first to be published by them, so I'm pleased. It was much more welcome than the headache I got (and which is thankfully in retreat).

Here's a picture from our trip yesterday, a random waterfall coming down off a random mountain. Couldn't have asked for better weather to drive up to the North Cascades.



This one is of Diablo Lake.



And here's one of Ross Lake. If you look closely, you can see a few jagged peaks of Mt. Hozomeen in the distant center. I tried to write a few haiku about it, but I imagine Kerouac had a better view of it from Desolation Peak than I did from the southern viewpoint. Still, he wrote haiku (to varying degrees of success) about it, so here's one of my attempts:

Mt. Hozomeen
distant jagged peaks
guarding Canada



But now, I really must focus on editing and revising the rough draft of "Nullum." More on that in a future post...

I mentioned in my last post that I'd talk about haikuishness later. So here's my haiku news:
http://wistaria.blogspot.com/2009/05/pinewood-haiku-contest-winners.html



I took 2nd place in the 2009 Pinewood Haiku Contest with my junco haiku. It's the first haiku contest I've ever placed in, so I'm quite pleased. The haiku itself came about last winter when I was sitting here at my desk, probably working on my novel and watching the juncos eat seed outside my window. Simple as that.

The following link will take you to the Roadrunner Haiku website, where 3 of my "seven moons" poems are published after 5 of Michael Dylan Welch's "seven suns" poems. (Five of his "neon buddha" poems are also published in this issue of Roadrunner.) http://www.roadrunnerjournal.net/pages92/haiku92_revealed.htm If you don't know the story behind the surreal "seven suns" and "seven moons" poems, it's this: Michael wrote the "seven suns" poems all in a go, and emailed them to me to see what I thought. They struck such a chord inside me that I had to respond to them, not by just circling my favorites, but by trying my own hand at something similar. So I sat down and wrote "seven moons" all in one go. They just came to me, just as they came to him, quickly and with very little conscious thinking. They were a lot of fun, and we followed them up with two rengay and a kasen renku, though none of the linked forms seemed to carry quite the energy of the originals. Ultimately, it would be wonderful to publish all of the "seven suns" and "seven moons" poems.

Simply Haiku also has two of my senryu in their summer 2009 issue: http://simplyhaiku.com/SHv7n2/senryu/senryu.html I'm tickled to find my humble senryu right next to poems by Cor van den Heuvel and Christopher Herold.

And to top it off, the summer issue of Modern Haiku arrived in the mail today, right when I was wanting a fresh dose of haiku! Here's a link to the site, which includes Deborah Kolodji's great haiku, among others: http://www.modernhaiku.org/issue40-2/haiku40-2.html

OK, that's all the haiku news for now. I'd better get some submitted so I might have further haiku news in the future!

What an absolutely gorgeous day here! 70 degrees with hazy blue sky. Still working to finish the rough draft of "Nullum: Book One." Three cheers for writing outside on the shaded patio, surrounded by potted trees and herbs!

On a different writing front, the Summer 2009 issue of Simply Haiku is on-line now: http://simplyhaiku.com/SHv7n2/senryu/senryu.html I've got two senryu in it and more to come in future issues. Still waiting for Roadrunner to publish their May issue, and I don't know if Wisteria's April issue is late, or if I just didn't receive it. Now I need to get some more haiku (and tanka) submissions circulating.

Time for tea and writing.

Work on the rough draft of "Nullum Desiderium: Book One" continues. I have decided that Delkana, the star of the short story, "The Tithe", does not actually need to be in this book. Poor Del. I just couldn't figure out how to introduce a soon-to-be major character in the last chapters of the book, so I'll just have to find some other way to introduce her in Book Two.

That said, I am on page 147 (1.5 spaced & Cochin font) and nearing 50,000 words for Book One. The tithe scene is underway and gaining momentum. With luck, I will get enough written this evening to justify taking a break tomorrow to go to Top Pot and reread previous chapters. If not...well, no doughnuts for me.

In other news, yesterday was Russ's birthday and we saw our first ever pair of Wilson's warblers in the backyard right before we were going to head out for Indian food. Such cheery yellow birds on an otherwise grey day. The sun is making a half-hearted attempt to shine at the moment. It's supposed to be nice this weekend (upper 60s), which means I'll have to break out the t-shirts again (I've moved back to long-sleeved shirts and a scarf this week).

Has anyone seen the April issue of Wisteria yet? Just curious. I have not. I am also eagerly awaiting the May issue of Roadrunner and Simply Haiku: http://www.roadrunnerjournal.net/ and http://simplyhaiku.com/SHv7n1/index-issue.html since I should have poems in each issue. Ah well...patience...

OK, time to stretch the legs and then resume writing!

I know I'm a few days late, but welcome to Spring! Seems like it's been a particularly long winter this year, and even though there was no dramatic change of seasons on Friday, it still feels like we've turned an optimistic corner of sorts. This feeling was only boosted by the sighting of the first swallow of spring yesterday whilst walking around Mercer Slough. As usual, I heard it first and craned my neck, forgetting what the sound belonged to until I saw that small shape sailing through the sky. Don't know why swallows fill me with such joy, but I let out an exclamation and did a little dance on the spot. It disappeared shortly thereafter, hopefully not because of my exhuberance, and I probably won't see another one for weeks, but still, it made my day.

Other excitement yesterday included an email from Katherine Samuelowicz saying that she's publishing 3 of my haiku in the next issue of Paper Wasp. Here's the website, though it hasn't been updated in a while: http://members.optusnet.com.au/paperwasp/index.html . I'm quite pleased and look forward to receiving my contributor's copy. Never been published in an Australian journal before.

Work continues on "Nullum." I'm on Chapter 4 now and bridging the time between "Do You Believe in Fairies?" and "Equinox." It's a good distraction from wondering and worrying about Clarion West. I should hear back from them within the next week and a half, though my hope is fading with each day that it will be positive news. Still, chin up. Stranger things have happened . . . (trying to remember what they are).

To end on an upbeat note, I received yet another hand-me-down of technology from Russ. First was his pocket PC, which makes a wonderful alarm clock, second was his mobile phone, which is a bit clunky, but easy to text on, and now I am in possession of his Sony Reader (his new one arrives tomorrow). While I will never foresake paper books for electronic ones, it is fiendishly handy whilst reading at the breakfast table not having to hold down pages or worry about getting jam on them. Besides, I'm quite enjoying the irony of reading "Pride and Prejudice" on an e-book.

OK, back to "Nullum."

Happy Friday the 13th!

Yesterday, along with doing laundry, I also got a few haiku/senryu submissions emailed off. I thought I'd better get that done while I was still in a haikuish mood from last weekend, so I sent some to The Heron's Nest and received a kind reply from Alice Frampton (their deadline is in a few days). I also submitted 10 senryu to Al Pizzarelli at Simply Haiku after Russ fixed my email so that I could do so (it's very handy to be married to a computer geek!). Feeling accomplished, I then watched a few episodes of "Angel" with Russ and Belle. When I checked my email right before shutting my computer down for the night, I was surprised to receive an email from Al Pizzarelli, not only confirming that he'd received the submission, but that he had accepted 9 out of the 10 poems (he didn't take my lichen poem because he considered it a haiku). I gave an exclamation that I won't repeat here and promptly reread the email about 3 times, not believing that I'd read it correctly. I've never sent anything to Simply Haiku before, so I don't know if this is a common experience for submitters, but wow! Needless to say, it took me a while to fall asleep after that.

Here's a link to their website: http://simplyhaiku.com/SHv7n1/index-issue.html I'll send another link in May when my senryu start appearing. It'll be the first time my poems have appeared in an on-line journal, though I do have a poem on the Bottle Rockets highlights page: http://www.bottlerocketspress.com/themagsubscriptions/highlights.html

Time to head to Top Pot for a celebratory doughnut. Enjoy the sunshine!

Last weekend, the first quarterly Haiku Society of America (HSA) meeting of 2009 was held in Chapman Hall on U of O campus in Eugene, OR. It's the second such meeting I've attended (the first being last summer at Hugo House in Seattle), and I had an absolute blast! It was an honor to not only meet some esteemed haiku poets and editors of haiku journals, but also to hang out with them. I was one of the youngest folks there, but it was such fun to listen to everyone, even when they were talking about subjects that were way over my head.

Here's a picture of Ce Rosenow, who did an amazing job of organizing the event.


Here are Charlie Trumbull and Michael Dylan Welch discussing something, possibly James W. Hackett.


And here are Carolyn Hall and Fay Aoyagi posing on the couch. George Swede is in the background.


I found the panel of journal editors to be educational, learning what three different editors looked for in submissions and I enjoyed Charlie Trumbull's talk on James W. Hackett, though there was a lot of information to absorb. The two workshops I attended, the first taught by Fay Aoyagi and the second by Michael Dylan Welch, were informative and inspiring to the point that they made the drive from Eugene back to Salem annoying...ideas kept popping into my head and I couldn't write them down until I stopped at a gas station. This is why I love mass transit...I can write haiku as they come to me, and don't have to concentrate on bothersome things like driving.

We ate dinner at the Excelsior Inn on Saturday night and I felt a little like a kid being allowed to sit at the grown-ups' table. The food was fabulous, so I just soaked up all the conversations around me and tried to think of intelligent comments to make or questions to ask. I'm not the best conversationalist in the world, even when I've gotten over the awe of being around poets and editors I've admired for years. Maybe next time I'll do better.

But the whole weekend was an incredible amount of fun and although I'd decided not to attend the big conference in Ottawa this summer, I'm starting to rethink it. We shall see...

Well, the house is slightly cleaner and I'm mostly packed for my train trip down to Salem tomorrow. I'm hoping for a window seat on the water side, though it's difficult to identify ducks, grebes, and the like from the upper deck of a train traveling at ??miles an hour. I'm also rather hoping we don't get any more snow tonight. We woke to an inch and a half this morning (surprise!), and while it has melted off the roads, the front lawn is still covered. Actually, it looks a lot better with snow covering up the shaggy, dug-up mossy patches.

By a stroke of luck, I received a reply from Modern Haiku this afternoon (they accepted a poem!), so I was able to choose 3 haiku from the 9 they rejected for my entry to the Pinewood Haiku Contest. http://pinewoodhaiku.blogspot.com/ 'Twas a good lesson though, to not send out submissions right before a contest deadline. I'm also waiting to hear back from Paper Wasp, but that won't likely be for a couple more weeks.

Time to see if I can't get a little bit written on "Nullum" before it's time for Doctor Who and ice cream.

So we've been watching "Buffy" Season 5 and "Angel" Season 2 concurrently, as suggested by our friends, A&K, and while I'm still waiting for more of a link between the two shows, I've been enjoying the episodes. An interesting side effect of watching too many Joss Whedon shows about vampires right before bed is that I've had a couple dreams where I'm a vampire, including one this morning. It was bizarrre, but entertaining. Sadly, most of the details evaporated upon waking, but I remember something about going out for pasta and wearing long-sleeved shirts to keep from burning in the sunlight. Happily, there was absolutely no sparkling.

Yesterday, I went to Top Pot Doughnuts in Bellevue. http://www.toppotdoughnuts.com/ My new favorite doughnut is the peppermint snowdrift, a chocolate doughnut with peppermint frosting. Mouth-wateringly good. Hung out and wrote for a while there, plotting out "Nullum" and composing a few poems. There's just something about the atmosphere that is very conducive to writing. Maybe it's the wall of books. Maybe it's the scent of doughnuts. Maybe it was the warm sunlight streaming in through the south windows. If not for the unhealthy seductiveness of doughnuts, I'd go there more often.

On a different note, the Haiku Society of America is having their Spring 2009 meeting in Eugene, OR. Details can be found here: http://www.hsa-haiku.org/quarter-mtg.htm . I'll be attending on the weekend, then heading up to Corvallis and Salem to visit folks. Hmmm...I should probably buy some train tickets before long.

Now it's time to get some haiku ready to submit. I don't have anything under consideration, except for a rengay that Michael and I wrote last October. Gotta have something to look forward to in the mail, even if it is a rejection notice.

Although it didn't start raining in earnest here until late this afternoon, it was a good day to get haiku related things done. Some of those things involved getting some poems ready to submit to a few journals. Other things involved researching some haiku and short poem websites. So I've got a few to share with you. The first is "Prune Juice," Alexis Rotella's new journal of senryu and kyoka. The first issue is online here: ttp://www.prunejuicejournal.com/index.html . I was only going to read the first few poems but ended up devouring all of them. I'm a fan of senryu (I am less familiar with kyoka), and there are some gems in this issue. I'm already looking forward to the next one.

The second website worth investigating is this one: http://www.broadsidedpress.org/ . It's for Broadsided, which is all about getting broadsides of poetry, short prose, and art out there where folks can see them. I love the idea and have often though that drab restrooms could use more literary arts.

OK, time to attend to a certain meowing cat who thinks I should devote my every waking hour to providing a lap for her. I fear she may be a bit spoiled, but she's right to some degree. I need to spend some time getting in a short story frame of mind, and that means reading, which means sitting down with a blanket on my lap and inviting her up to keep me warm. And so it goes...

Apparently, I haven't been to Elliott Bay Books http://www.elliottbaybook.com/index.jsp for a while, because when I went there today, I discovered that they've redone the cafe downstairs. Surprise! The bookshelves lining the walls are gone, and strangely, I don't miss them. It looks nice, brighter, and the ladies bathroom has lovely faucets. There's a name for the variety of faucet handles with four, white enamel spokes on them, but I don't know what it is. Suffice it to say, I'm fond of them. Don't know why. Go check it out and let me know what you think.

But even with the improved writing environment, I couldn't resist the siren call of all the books upstairs. That was the main reason I headed into Seattle today. So I succumbed. Hurray for the 10% discount that comes with being a card-carrying Hugo House member! http://www.hugohouse.org/

After gorging myself on books (along with an orange currant scone and a cuppa), I dropped by Dry Soda Co. http://www.drysoda.com/about-tasting-room.php They have 2 new flavours, folks, and as samples were being offered, I partook. The flavours are juniper berry and vanilla bean. I'm not a fan of gin, but the juniper berry soda was delicious. So crisp and clean and green. Reminded me of hiking along a juniper ridge in the Ochocos in the hot summer. The vanilla bean soda was wonderful. Not too sweet, no unpleasant aftertaste, just a light vanilla cream soda without the cream. I bought a couple bottles of each (forsaking the lavender because I simply couldn't carry more with all the books that were already in my bag). I'm looking forward to sharing them with our fellow rockers when next we meet.

This evening, I've been working on my haiku, transferring ones I've jotted down in my "everywhere" notebook to my haiku notebook. Tomorrow I'll get some ready to submit to journals since I don't have anything circulating at the moment. There are also a few contests I hope to enter:

http://moonsetnewspaper.blogspot.com/
http://pinewoodhaiku.blogspot.com/

Also, tomorrow, Jan. 7, is the deadline for the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival haiku contest, so if you haven't entered a haiku yet, go for it! http://www.vcbf.ca/haiku

On an unrelated note, if you haven't checked out the website for Tundra: The Journal of the Short Poem, please do so... http://sites.google.com/site/tundrashortpoem/

As for Clarion West, I am still planning on applying. But it's bedtime, and I don't want to think about it right before bed. Too stressful. Eek.

Haikuishness. Bookishness. Tookishness. Doctor Whoishness. Good night.